Plums with everything!

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We have a Victoria plum tree in the garden, and this year seems to have been a perfect year for plums. Funny, because often good years alternate with poor years, but last year was a good year as well. Last year we had lots of plums to spare but we didn’t rush to use them all up, thinking this year might not be so good – so we still have several packages of plums in the freezer. Two things are making this year an extra special harvest. First, most years some of the plums are affected by plum moths, with little grubs found inside the fruits that ripen first, but so far this year I haven’t found a single one! Secondly, the weather now is warm and mostly cloudy, not hot and sunny, and I think this is helping the plums to ripen more slowly rather than all at once, as usually happens. The result is that we are having a fantastic plum harvest. And they are so delicious! A plum fresh off the tree, warm from the sun, bears absolutely no comparison to the horrible hard round things that are sold in supermarkets under the name of plums. Every couple of days we can fill a basket with the delicious fruit, and it’s generally a case of ‘eat one, put a couple in the basket, eat another one, put a few more in the basket’ etc. We’ve eaten so many, given punnets away to friends and neighbours, and at the weekend we had a big dinner with friends and used about 50 to make plum charlotte, which went down really well. There’s still several days’ worth left and I think I’m going to try bottling some as well since our freezer is pretty full already! What do you like to do with plums? All rights reserved. © Text copyright Fleur 2025